


Ten Moments from the Holmes Household

by SkipandDi (ladyflowdi)



Series: Infiltrate Interludes [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adopted Children, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Adoption, Fluff, M/M, Married Couple, Married Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 12:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4876051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/SkipandDi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taped to the kettle is an envelope. On the front, written in blue crayon, is simply <i>Dady and Papa. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Moments from the Holmes Household

**Author's Note:**

> By far our favorite collection of stories, here are ten moments from the Holmes household.

1.

John loved his kids, God only knew, that was the truth. He'd accepted Sherlock's decision to adopt little Lucy, because there was nowhere else for her to go, and because she was a little soul who needed help, and protection, and comfort. Sherlock was her knight in shining armor, and if being with them meant that she could sleep, and eat, and forget about what had happened to her, John was alright with having another child in their home.

What he could have never foretold was what would happen when two strong-willed children lived under the same roof.

Andrew spent the first month, the _entire first month_ Lucy was with them, bawling his eyes out. He was convinced that his daddy and his papa didn't love him anymore, howling every time he saw a fraction more attention doted on his new sister. If she got a drop more milk at dinner, he cried. If she got a new shirt to replace a torn one, he cried. If she got her hair brushed and braided, he cried (though honestly, John didn't quite understand that one). The worst was when John and Sherlock took them both to the park, and Andrew had a bloody meltdown because those were _his swings_ Daddy, not _her_ swings and didn't Papa love him anymore? Things escalated from heartbroken tears to raging temper tantrums, and it didn't seem to matter at all where they were -- Andrew would kick and scream as if someone were bloody killing him.

That would have been enough to be getting on with, if Lucy weren't doing the exact same thing.

With Andrew, whenever he got out of hand John just let the child scream it all out -- there was no talking to him while he was in that state. But with Lucy things were different, and she didn't throw temper tantrums so much as _hide_. Under the bed, in the wardrobes, under the loo sink. He once found her crammed into the old dumbwaiter John had been telling Sherlock to get bloody boarded up for six months. He could hear her crying before he found her, heartfelt sobbing so unlike his raging son. It broke his heart, made him curl her up into his arms, even when she held herself stiff, and had the natural reaction of setting Andrew off again.

For a solid month, John was convinced that this was going to be their life now, two raging four year olds and bloody _Sherlock_ , who'd panicked the first time he'd walked in to Andrew nearly purple with fury on the sitting room floor. He hadn't been there for Andrew's glorious two's, and as such was utterly useless in the entire situation.

John truly didn't think it was going to end, that he was just going to have to live with the screaming, and fighting, and bickering (and the hair pulling and scratching and biting) until one day, completely out of nowhere, the children came to the breakfast table hand-in-hand. He stared at them from the cooker, trying to understand this new and dawning sense of horror. He burned breakfast, but both kids cheerfully accepted oatmeal and toast instead, helpfully passing each other the cinnamon, and an extra napkin, and traded halves of toast to taste one another's jams (blueberry and strawberry, respectively). He didn't have to carry Andrew to school, screaming his head off, didn't have to haul Lucy over his shoulder to get her into her class -- they both held each of his hands all the way to school, chatting cheerfully with one another about a cartoon they'd watched last night. They even stopped to look at a bird sitting on a stop sign at the corner, and when they got to school Andrew kissed his cheek, and Lucy smiled at him, and they both went skipping up the steps like bloody Stepford children.

"What in the world is the matter with you?" Sherlock had asked when John returned home, white as a sheet.

"They've joined forces," John said, in a daze, and Sherlock stared at him like he'd just damned them all.

After that there began a hereto unknown and unforeseen chapter of their lives that John tried his utmost best to forget. He'd thought that the screaming rows were the worst of it, but nothing, _nothing_ could have prepared them for when their children joined forces.

Andrew was younger than Lucy and yet watched over her like a big brother. _That's a two Lucy, not a four_ he would say, while they were doing their homework, and _No, Lucy, your shoes go here_ , when they got home from school with muddy boots, and _No Lucy, the yellow and red go together_ when Sherlock found them microwaving crayolas in the Wildenhain Sherlock's mother had given them as a wedding present.

And _No Lucy, that's Daddy_ , when Lucy called him 'John'.

John came to learn that silence meant trouble, and that no one was safe (John found Mr. Gold's 'son', Mr. Gold Jr., swimming with confusion through a reef of sagging, shredded toilet paper rolls in his bowl), and that being a father was hard bloody work when one was trying to pound values into thick heads, and that splitting was all-too-real and John had to upgrade their mobile package to include unlimited texts when he realized that the only way he could get a straight answer when four little eyes were gazing up at him was to text Sherlock right then and there. It was insanity, and John honestly didn't know what he would have done if Harry had given he and Sherlock twins like their gynecologist had originally thought. The thought was horrifying.

They'd had Lucy for six months the first time Sherlock got a case that required both of them to travel out to southwest Devon, and, with hearts in their throats, they decided to leave Lucy and Andrew with Mycroft. Though Lucy had never stayed with her new uncle, and was quiet and shy at first, within ten minutes she was running with Andrew all over Mycroft's townhome, Thatcher barking joyfully after them. "Watch them," John said, setting the children's suitcase down. "Like a hawk. Just when you think they're calm and quiet, that's when they're staging a coup."

"Don't forget that Andrew is allergic to nuts -- his medicine is in his satchel, as are his extra pair of glasses," Sherlock added, putting down the other case.

"And Lucy sleeps with her ragdoll, Gloria -- don't forget Gloria, whatever you do. Keep a tally of what they destroy, we'll pay for it when we get home."

"John," Mycroft replied, amused, and clapped him on the shoulder. "That I survived Sherlock's adolescence should speak to my abilities with children."

"You think you're funny, Mycroft," Sherlock snapped, cross and worried and trying not to let on.

"I'll never know how any of us made it, honestly it was touch and go there for a bit," he answered, openly smiling, and Sherlock made a sound like a wounded bear. Mycroft's ears were saved only by the children skidding back into the entrance hall. Andrew threw himself into John's arms, Lucy into Sherlock's, and John spent the next twenty minutes demanding that they behave, while kissing them both until their noses scrunched and they were wiping at their cheeks.

They spent the next week out in Devon, on the moor. John, while perfectly aware there were still moors in England, just hadn't realized that staying in a house overlooking one would somehow automatically send them back to Victorian England. It was all just a bit too ridiculous, and in the end he didn't get himself killed, or kill Sherlock (which was the important bit, considering the twat disappeared for two days and worried him nearly sick), and they brought Richard Mortimer to justice for the murder of Henry Baskerville's uncle, and they even caught an escaped convict, which was always a nice extra.

They caught the train back to London, exhausted and unable to sleep. That was really the only reason why, when Mycroft opened the door for them and Lucy screamed, "Andrew, Daddy and Papa are home!", John had to clench his eyes shut so his children wouldn't see what those two words had just done to him.

The children were like little tornados, jumping up and down and showing them all that they'd done, including a banner-sized picture they'd both made for them that was an indecipherable mess but which Andrew assured them both was "Me and Lucy -- see, there's her brown hair and there's my yellow hair -- and Papa and Daddy! Papa, you have your agnifyers glass, and Daddy you have a blue stripey jumper! Do you like it, do you like it??"

John bit the inside of his mouth until he could control his voice, and with two little sets of eyes staring up at him excitedly, he said, "Oh kids, it's wonderful, it's just absolutely lovely. Sherlock--"

Sherlock, who was staring down at the picture in his hands, Andrew's arms around his waist and hugging him tightly. Sherlock, who looked as if, with one blow, his children had taken his metaphorical knees out from under him.

John smiled so hard it made his cheeks hurt, and buried his face in Lucy's curls, hugging her tightly. Sherlock said, voice raspy and rough, "We're going to frame this."

Andrew gasped. "Really? In a brown one with glass like Mrs Hudson's parlor?"

"Of course," Sherlock replied, lifting him up into his arms. "It isn't everyday that we have a family portrait."

2.

"Andrew, you are going to sit on that toilet and go," Sherlock orders.

Andrew just frowns, eyebrows scrunching down behind his glasses. "No potty."

"Not an option," Sherlock replies. "You're almost four and you're brilliant. Stop being so deliberately difficult."

"Did you just try to reason with a three year old?" John's voice calls from living room. "And then accuse him of being deliberately difficult?"

"It's not like he's being difficult on accident," Sherlock calls back. He doesn't look away from Andrew because that would mean giving up on the stare-down.

John appears in the doorway. "The way you're going about this you'll have put him off toilets until secondary."

Sherlock's scowl increases. "He wouldn't _dare_."

Andrew stares back, unperturbed by Sherlock's rather blatant ire, which is a clear indication of John's genetics at work. "No potty Daddy," he says to John.

"Not today," John agrees, looking placid when Sherlock transfers his scowl over.

"You're letting him engage in splitting."

John rolls his eyes. "Every time I disagree with one of your nutty parenting decisions does not mean he's splitting."

"Papa." Andrew tugs on Sherlock's hand, and Sherlock looks down just in time to see Andrew pee all over the floor.

Sherlock looks up at John. "Tell me that wasn't deliberate."

John scratches at his ear, but it's clearly just to hide his laugh.

3.

There are three days a month that John actively dreads.

The first is the monthly budget counts. This usually falls on a Friday, though if John is really unlucky – or if he spent the better part of the week chasing after Sherlock, or stopping Sherlock from the chase, or if the kids get into mischief or get sick – then budget day falls on a Sunday.

John _hates_ Sundays, has come to actively loathe them since he became a parent. Sundays are groceries, washing clothes and planning meals, chasing after the kids and cleaning up toys and doing schoolwork. That the budget has made its way to Sundays is just another nail in the coffin of John’s hatred for Sundays. It takes him the better part of two hours to not only do their own budget, but the businesses as well. John’s sure it wouldn’t be so bad if Sherlock helped, but the day that happened he would sprout bloody wings and fly to the moon.

The second day John dreads is Cleaning Day, in which he devotes a Saturday a month to scrubbing out the sty these people called ‘home’. The horrors he has discovered under beds, behind cabinets and under sinks could be classified as ‘alive’ – he’s certain that at least of the few things he’s found had a pulse. It wouldn’t be so bad – or at least some sick kind of tolerable – if the messes were only kid-generated. He could only be so lucky.

“Sherlock!’ he shouts, hitting his head on the bottom of the cabinet as he wriggles his way out from under it. “Sherlock!”

“What?” Sherlock yells back, muffled from the stairwell.

“Did you put a bag of live crickets under my bloody kitchen sink?” he bellows.

The sudden silence from upstairs is answer enough.

The third day he dreads, perhaps more than budget day, perhaps more than _cleaning_ day, is Going To See Grandmummy day.

Often times they plan it for a Friday and Saturday, driving out to Ascot after the kids come out of school and leaving mid-afternoon on Saturday. It works out fairly well; the kids see their grandmother, Adella stops sending him emails that make him want to claw out his eyes from the guilt, and he and Sherlock have the most spectacular sex in that ridiculous monstrosity he calls a bed.

It’s getting there that’s the problem.

“Alright!” he says, looking at his clipboard – his bloody _clipboard_. “Ribbit?”

“Here!” Andrew says, looking up at him with big eyes behind his glasses. Ribbit has seen better days, but there he is, snug under Andrew’s arm.

“Right-o,” John says. “Annabella?”

“I don’t need Annabella anymore, Daddy,” Lucy says solemnly, as if they don’t both know she’d be crying for it by bedtime.

John makes a note of it – on his _clipboard_ , which he has for these absurd moments in parenting – and asks, “Shoes?”

Both children stomp their feet with a giggle, and off they go from there. Everyone has clothes, two sets for two days, and an extra two sets for emergencies – of which there were always plenty. Pajamas, toothbrushes, socks, coloring books for the drive, and John’s one concession on his No Technology In Their Formative Years, Sherlock stance – an iPod with dual ports so they can listen to music. It had been that or Raffi, and John doesn’t think he can stand another three hour drive listening to _Baby Beluga_ on repeat.

John hates these long distance drives with the blazing hot power of the sun. He despises the M6, and the other drivers, and the twisting, turning road leading into Ascot, and the way that his children are occupied and it’s _Sherlock_ who can’t sit still, a ball of nervous energy that bleeds into the backseat, into John’s own hands. It had been why he’d agreed to the iPod to begin with, Raffi notwithstanding – so that his kids couldn’t hear him hiss to their father, “Would you bloody sit still?”

“Forced inactivity may very well be my downfall,” Sherlock hisses back, kicking his feet up onto the dash. His knees are nearly pressed to his chest, the hem of his trousers riding up so John gets a very unattractive glance at his hairy calves. “I hate this.”

“ _You_ hate this?” John asks, glances back at the kids in the rearview mirror – noses buried in their respective coloring books, earphones in place. “You’re not the one shuttling three children across bloody England.”

“I told you that I would drive,” Sherlock replies primly, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“You don’t have a license.”  
  
“And?”

“What do you mean, ‘and’?” John demands. “You’ve never driven before.”

Sherlock favors him with a remarkably insulting look, half pity, half exasperation. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“There are times when I know I’ve earned my spot in heaven,” John mutters, glaring at the car ahead of them, which seems to be driven by a woman in her late nineties.

Sherlock huffs, an explosion of sound, and throws himself back in his seat. In the cramped space of the car that equates to three centimeters and his trouser legs somehow creeping up to his knees.

“I swear to God – I swear to _God_ Sherlock – that if the next words out of your mouth are some sort of epitaph on your lot in life, all that fun you and I were planning to have tonight is off the table.”

“Daddy, are we going to the park?” Andrew asks from the backseat, overly loud from under his headphones.

“Not right now love, why?” John asks, braking again as the contemporary of Jesus swerves around absolutely nothing. “You know Grandmummy hasn’t got a park.”

“I know, but you said we’re going to have fun tonight,” Andrew says, looking at him with wide eyes. “The park is fun.”

“I would much rather go out for ice cream,” Lucy says imperiously from beside him, digging in her crayon box. “Ice cream is fun.”

  
“I think the park is funner than ice cream,” Andrew says, but then sensibly adds, “There are people who sell ice cream at the park too, so maybe it’s two fun things.”

“Yeah!” Lucy kicks her feet in her booster chair. “Daddy John, I think we should find a park with ice cream at Grandmummy’s house. Can that be our fun thing tonight?”

Sherlock is shaking with mirth, and John can’t drive, answer his child, and glare at his husband all at the same time.

4.

It has become readily apparent to all who know him that John isn't what anyone would call a _fan_ of people.

He deals with people, of course he does, on a regular bloody basis -- clients, and service people who charge his groceries, and the man on the corner who does their dry cleaning. He deals with the school, teachers and social events and PTO, and the gaggle of children who seem to flock to Baker Street at every opportunity, eating their food and using their toilets and screaming on top of their tiny lungs. Then there's Franz, and Mrs. Hudson, and _Mycroft,_ and the security team Mycroft thinks they don't know about it, and the _MI6 agents_ Adella also thinks they don't know about. John takes great joy in fucking Sherlock against the window some nights, his husband laughing so hard John can feel it snug around his cock. Afterwards Sherlock is always exceptionally affectionate, smiling at John like he's a prized possession, as if he has no idea at all that he belongs to John and sometimes John needs the world, and Sherlock's _family_ , to know it.

As time troops on and one year passes into the next, John's ability to deal with p _eople_ diminishes, slowly and surely, like a crack in a water glass. Never a fan of them to begin with, he's becoming downright curmudgeonly, and apparently it's a source of endless entertainment to his children and his spouse both.

"Honestly, he's lucky I didn't shove the bloody car up his bloody arse," John snaps, cupping Kaden's head against his chest where their son is strapped, secure, in the baby carrier designed especially for preemies.

"Wow, three pounds for the Swear Jar all at once," Andrew says, awed, from Sherlock's side. "We're going to get a new computer in less than a month," he tells Lucy and Monica, both of whom are somehow simultaneously wrapped around Sherlock's middle.

Heathrow is massive, pulsing with people. John's always hated it, _always --_ he hated it when he shipped out, hated it when he was invalided home, really, _really_ hated it when Sherlock left on his excursions before Andrew was born, and fuck if he doesn't hate it now, full of rude people and rude workers, the worst bits of humanity all crammed into one hideously ugly building. Sherlock's got a grip on both their kids, and John is certain to keep a hand on Kaden, because if anyone knocked into him and hurt his child he was going to jail tonight.

They push through the crowded airport, and he listens with half an ear to his kids, laughing and pointing and thoroughly enjoying the experience, and to the overhead speakers, where a nasal-voiced man from Wales is trying to confuse people with his accent. "Remind me of the flight again," Sherlock says beside him.

"American Airlines, 346," John says. "We're in the proper terminal, she said they'd be coming into Terminal 3."

"Look, Daddy!" Monica calls, pointing up at the flashing flight boards. "American Airlines!"

"Yes, love, but I don't see the -- oh look, there it is, you're perfectly right," John says, pointing too. "Flight 346, Sherlock."

"Then we are, in fact, in the proper place," Sherlock says, and it's almost jolting when his spouse gives him a small smile, tender and amused and like he can see John's patience wearing thin and finds it _hilarious_. "And on time."

"Don't you start with me," John snaps, and Sherlock's smile turns into a full-on grin. "If we'd left when I said we needed to leave we would have saved ourselves the traffic and the unnecessary stress of trying to navigate this hell-hole."

"Four pounds in one afternoon!" Andrew chirps, beaming. John narrows his eyes down at his son and Andrew, taking entirely too much after his father, smiles broadly.

"And we would have been waiting for nearly an hour," Sherlock says, with the exact same expression.

"A _stress free_ hour," John argues.

Overhead the chap with the awful accent mutters something into the microphone, but John catches enough of it to hear the flight numbers. "Alright, that's us," he says, and together they work their way through the crowd, people coming and going, luggage and squalling children and shouting businessmen, mobiles all but glued to their faces. It takes an inordinate amount of time to make it to the gate where the flight would be disembarking, though John has to tell a young chap from Australia off before they do, seeing as how he'd nearly walked right into John, and by extension John's five month old, exceptionally fragile, child. Finally, _finally_ they're where they have to be, and the kids seem to realize it, because almost immediately Lucy shivers with excitement and Andrew goes shy, curling in against Sherlock's coat.

There are people coming off the plane now, American business people, vacationing college students, families with luggage and carry-ons and strollers, and finally, after what seems like a long time, John catches sight of her. She's cut her hair, she's lost weight in some places and gained it in others, but all he sees is his sister, the girl she was and the woman she's become. She’s crying before she even sees him, and the moment their eyes lock her face just crumples like a tin can. Clara starts laughing when she sees it, and their daughter, _John's_ daughter, smiles and waves wildly.

They work their way through the crowd, each coming from different directions, and the moment they're close enough John's got Harry enfolded in as tight a hug as he can manage with a baby strapped to his chest. They're talking over one another, _shouting_ at each other, and John's eyes hurt and Harry's a fucking _wreck_ , kissing Kaden's tiny head over and over, and he's never been so damn happy to see someone as he is his sister, beautiful and whole and healthy.

The kids are all shouting at each other, laughing, and Clara's hugging Sherlock tightly, and then John is crouching down in front of his daughter at the exact same moment Andrew is folded into his mother's arms, and John's eyes hurt and Mia smiles at him and it's _breathtaking_ , and sometimes he wonders how it is that he waited to long to have a family, with all the love he has in himself to give.

5.

It had been a long time since Adella had done something illogical. That her grandchildren could provoke such behavior in her was yet another reason why she was grateful for their very existence.

Andrew she’d been long expecting, though Sherlock’s sentimentality in naming his son had admittedly caught her off-guard. Her grandson had her husband’s smile, her son-in-law’s eyes, and a set of brains that made her glow with pride. Watching her son while Andrew was christened had nearly brought her to tears, something she hadn’t thought herself even capable of anymore. She hadn’t seen that look on his face since her husband was alive; she hadn’t thought Sherlock would ever forgive her enough to let her see it again. She immediately became one of the many people who loved Andrew with a fierceness that could burn through to her core.

Then came Lucille. If Andrew was the child of her blood Lucy was the granddaughter of her heart -- determined and clever, resourceful and thoroughly independent. She drove her parents to distraction, Adella was happy to note. She spoiled Lucy rotten and happily fielded all of John’s increasing consternation at the gifts, Sherlock’s blatant resentment at her new-found leniency with the rules. Lucy was going to succeed at whatever she chose to do, and Adella was determined to give her as many opportunities as possible to figure out exactly what that would entail.

Monica she was more careful with. Adella worried about her incessantly, was drawn to care for the child like a wounded bird, like something unbearably delicate. It caused her to impress the scope of her influence (and Mycroft’s) more than she might have otherwise, certainly more than she had with Monica’s siblings. No one would take her away, Adella told her on a weekend in Paris when they’d gone shopping for decent school clothes, just the two of them. No one would hurt her again. Monica had nodded and looked at her with an understanding out of place on a ten year old, and like her father, and her siblings, had completely broken what pieces of Adella’s heart were left.

Kaden had surprised her, she could admit it. Sherlock wasn’t the type to want a big family - hated having to share the spotlight - but when she met the boy she’d better understood. Kaden was gorgeous, and darling, and his unfailing innocence seemed to cut through even Sherlock’s unyielding cynicism. She’d caught Sherlock absently singing to the baby in the garden, a lullaby in French she’d sung to him when he was young. Adella had been careful not to mention it, and instead commented more than once it was sheer luck Kaden even knew _how_ to walk, the way John was always carrying him around, and with his shoulder problems too.

She had a good idea of how much time she had left (barring the few unforeseen circumstances out there that could possibly make a difference). It made her both regretful and content to know her last moments were likely be something pleasant -- her chasing Kaden and Arthur around in the garden before she succumbed to the inevitable. She hoped it wasn’t overly traumatizing for them.

With that in mind, Adella nodded her assent, and watched the kids go screaming (literally, in Kaden’s case) into Hamleys, with the understanding that if they could figure out how to get it out of the store on their own they could have it.

6.

After more than a decade in marriage Sherlock was working under the assumption he was largely immune from the insecurities that plague new relationships. Not that his relationship with John had ever felt particularly _new_. They had always proceeded with an air of permanence, of inevitability, of... dedication, perhaps. John had killed a man for Sherlock the night after they met; it was hard to top that as an indication of fidelity.

Ten years of marriage and here they were: four children, nearly twenty bags of groceries, three backpacks, one pram, and one incredibly irritating man, on the ground with a hand rising to nurse the part of his jaw Sherlock had just punched him in.

The older kids were gaping. Kaden as per norm was in his pram with a massive grin on his face, at peace with his world and all that went on in it. John stared at him in shock. “ _Sherlock!_ ”

Sherlock flexed his fingers in his glove. “I trust I don’t need to reiterate my point?” he directed at Jared Harris, Daily Mail correspondent. He got a shocked look and a cautious shake of the head as confirmation of his hypothesis. “Excellent. For goodness sake, Lucille hold your bag up.”

He strode off, his family in tow. They followed in stunned silence for two blocks, before Sherlock’s phone trilled in his pocket. He shuffled his grocery bags once more and answered it without looking. “He had it coming, Mycroft.”

“Undoubtedly,” Mycroft’s answered, unamused. “That doesn’t mean you can’t show a little restraint now and then.”

“I thought it prudent to resolve the matter as efficiently as possible, and John has requested I refrain from verbally eviscerating other people where the children can hear.”

“Don’t you dare put this on me Sherlock Holmes,” John snarled next to him. He was speed walking to keep up with Sherlock; Kaden probably felt he was involved in some sort of race.

As they turned the corner to their home Sherlock hung up the phone on Mycroft’s incessant twittering; if the man didn’t want Sherlock to interact with the media as he saw fit he shouldn’t have put his family in the spotlight with his egotistical political ambitions. He opened the door and stood inside, where the children filed in, looking up at Sherlock with shock (Andrew), confusion (Monica), and a disturbing amount of glee (Lucy). “That was _brilliant_ , Papa.”

John maneuvered the pram inside the foyer. “Get upstairs,” he told Lucy, who heard the unspoken warning and took off for the kitchen. Sherlock crouched down to release Kaden, who blew a raspberry at him. “You just set a _terrible_ example for our kids.”

“You made it clear you heard me speaking to Mycroft, I’m not going to repeat my reasoning.” Sherlock stood up with Kaden. “Having your past conquests paraded in front of my face is not something I’m going to put up with.”

“It was hearsay!”

“Are you saying he was wrong?” Sherlock asked, leaning in. John faltered and Sherlock felt his eyes narrow. “I thought so.”

“You realize you’re getting jealous over something that happened over twenty years ago, right?”

“Irrelevant.” He walked forward, pushing John back one step, then another. “And I won’t have our children among the people who know you as ‘Three Continents Watson’.”

John had the gall to look remorseful -- not for his actions, but at being caught out. “That was a long time ago.”

“So you mentioned.” Kaden was squirming impatiently, reaching out to tug at John’s hair with a drool-covered hand. Rather than remove the hand he picked Kaden out of Sherlock’s hands and held him up. Sherlock used the new-found freedom to loom over John and whisper in his ear; considering the dull red color that blossomed on John’s face his point came across loud and clear.

The hours between their return home and everyone’s bedtime was bloody interminable.

7.

"What's wrong with Dad's leg?" Monica asks the room at large. Neither of her siblings bat an eye at the sudden inquisition -- far stranger questions had been asked in their house before.

Lucy lay sprawled on the sofa, her tiny frame somehow managing to take up all the available space; Andrew sat adjacent on the floor, digging doggedly through several of their father's books. Kaden lay asleep in the portable crib and Monica sat at the table, forced to finish up her much-delayed homework.

The way she was still in fact avoiding said homework would have gotten her in trouble, but both their parents were in the basement office with a client -- an older man who'd stood uncomfortably on the landing as three sets of curious eyes looked at him from the top of the stairs.

Andrew answered absently, "He was attacked by an evil, maniacal genius."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Life is not a comic book," she answers, "and there's nothing wrong with his _leg_. It's his foot."

"Well what happened to his foot?" Monica presses, her homework already forgotten. She hasn't been here that long but her parents live their lives like the heroes from her favorite cartoons, and she thinks Andrew's probably not just being a dork.

Lucy sighs theatrically and flings herself up off the sofa, walks _over_ the coffee table even though Dad always tells her not to because it makes her look like an unschooled heathen. She heads into the kitchen and starts rummaging around in the cupboards, but her voice carries easily. "Dad was saving Papa's life from this crazy guy who liked to blow things up, and he smooshed all the bones in his foot."

"Ew," Monica answers automatically, her nose scrunching in distaste.

Andrew comments from the floor, "Taking a loved one as a hostage is a common literary trope, Lucy, and anyway it was _Papa_ who saved Dad, not the other way around."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Lucy answers, ripping into a bag of crisps on her way back to the sofa.

"I know more than you do," Andrew answers. Neither of them seem to care that Kaden is sleeping three feet away, but he can stay asleep in a train station. "And Dad said you couldn't have that."

"No, Dad said _not_ to have it; there's a difference." Lucy seems supremely unconcerned, falling back onto the sofa and picking up her phone. "And I know what really happened. They were chasing this crazy guy -- there's video of him on Youtube, his name was James Moriarty -- and they got separated and Dad got shot in the shoulder and they beat him up and then crunched his foot all up like pepper in a grinder."

"That's so gross," Monica says, trying to figure out who had told Lucy all that so she can go ask more questions. She has so many questions all of sudden, and now she's worried as well. "What if it happens again?"

"It won't." Both her siblings answer at the same time, and Andrew continues, "Papa's too smart to make the same mistake twice."

They seem unconcerned so she tries to be as well, and her father _is_ very, very smart. "Do you think it still hurts?"

They both look up at her, considering. "Sometimes," Lucy answers slowly, as if it's not something she's thought about before. "Like when he has to go up lots of stairs."

"Or that time he tripped into the ditch, remember?" Andrew adds. "And he cursed really loud and told us not to repeat him?"

Lucy nods. "Yeah, and Papa got mad at him for being a klutz."

Monica looks between them imploringly. "We should get him something to make it hurt less."

"Like what?" Andrew asks. She shrugs, because she's not good at making things better, she's just used to spotting the things that are wrong.

Lucy opens her phone. "I'll ask Grandmum."

Monica brightens, because their grandmother always, _always_ has an answer for everything.

Lucy smiles into the phone when she says hello, because from what Monica can tell Grandmum is pretty much her favorite person ever. "We need your help -- we want to make Dad's foot better."

The next day there's a knock on the door, and since John is closest at the time he goes to answer it. He opens the door, rears back, blinks in surprise, and says, "Franz?"

The Swede -- who has somehow only gotten _bigger_ in the last decade or so -- nods down at John, almost affectionate. "I heard you needed some help with your foot?"

8.

When John opens his eyes he feels _warm_ first, under the blankets and curled up against Sherlock’s back, along every inch where they’re touching. _Warm_ radiates outwards from his inside, makes him sigh before he’s even properly unglued his eyelashes. Sherlock’s hair is tickling his nose; he smells like the soap they used last night, late when the kids were all asleep and it was just the two of them under the shower, exhausted and sore and leaning into one another, trading sleepy kisses. He doesn’t even remember how they made it to bed.

Across from them, through the curtains they forgot to close, the sky is just beginning to lighten, blue and lavender. Sherlock is snuffling, not-quite-snores that he makes only when he’s past exhaustion. John understands; his body wants to stay curled up along Sherlock’s back but his bladder insists he shouldn’t, and he wants _tea_ , and the baby would be awake before long.

Sherlock makes a questioning noise when John slides out of bed, a rumble from somewhere in the vicinity of his sternum. John strokes his tangled curls out of his face, kisses the wrinkled brow, one corner of an eye that won’t quite open. “Time to get up, you lazy git,” he mumbles.

There are toys in the hall; John has to step over them to get to the loo. Homework half-done is spread all over the sitting room, a representation of the Tower of Pisa in Lego is taking up the tea table, and Kaden’s walker is covered in either paint or pudding or something far more sinister. The kitchen hasn’t escaped unscathed – there are trainers bloody _everywhere_ , and the schoolwork has spilled over onto their table, some sort of diorama made out of popsicle sticks and what look suspiciously like the owl bones Sherlock had been experimenting with last week. The plates are piled up in the sink near to the ceiling (dishwasher, what dishwasher, we have a dishwasher?), mayonnaise has been left out overnight, and the laundry is actually spilling out of the washing closet. Dirty socks and rainbow colored panties and every towel they own, and how, _how_ it got like this in a single night John can only attribute to his kids and their superhuman ability to be filthy animals.

He navigates the diorama (Monica), and the trainers (Lucy) and the plates (Andrew), and doesn’t look at the crime scene happening on the floor under the window where, by the looks of it, Kaden had indeed enjoyed the chocolate pudding Mrs Hudson had made for them the day before. Those were certainly his handprints on the wall. Having children, John learned years ago, is sometimes a study in willful blindness. Or at least until he’s had his bloody cup of tea.

Taped to the kettle is an envelope. On the front, written in blue crayon, is simply _Dady and Papa_.

He half expects an apology for the mess, but rather instead it’s a long letter typed out in a truly horrifying font, all swirls and squiggles and Monica’s absolute _favorite_.

He pours his tea, and after a moment fishing around in his dressing gown for his glasses, he sits at the table.

_Deer Dady and Papa,_

_You wil reed this wen we ah sleeping as it is skool tomoro but we al want to say that we ah so glade you ah hoam now and mised you tereblee._

_Yos vary sinsehly,_

_Androo, Lucy, Monica and Kadin_

John folds the letter again, presses it against his chest. Bloody _kids_.

Sherlock is only half asleep when John shuffles back to bed with his tea, crawling in and curling up along Sherlock’s back. He nuzzles in. “Awake?”

“My mind,” Sherlock mumbles, face mushed into his pillow and voice a slur, “is always awake.”

“If you say so, Papa,” he replies, and opens the note, propping it on Sherlock’s pillow. “Our children are trying to be adorable so we won’t ground them over the unholy disaster they’ve made.”

Sherlock squints at the squiggly wiggly type, huffing softly with amusement, or derision, or some combination of the two. “Her spelling has improved.”

“Reading, too. Lucy’s been helping her in the evenings, they spend at least an hour after they’re supposed to be in bed reading fashion tips from Barbie-dot-com.”

Sherlock snorts softly, turning over onto his back. John props his chin up on Sherlock’s chest, and the teacup right under his nose. “The flat looks as if someone took a child-bomb and detonated it in the living room.”

“Mm,” Sherlock replies, taking a sip from John’s tea. “Bedrooms?”

“Atrocious. Couldn’t even open Andrew’s all the way to check on him – every article of clothing he owns is on the floor.”

Sherlock chuckles, low in his throat, and John grins, plays gently with one soft curl behind his ear. “You do realize they get it all directly from you.”

Sherlock doesn’t have a chance to answer before their door opens a crack and Kaden peeks through.

Seeing them both awake, he pushes the door wide and rushes through, clumsy and half-asleep. “PapaDaddy!” he cries, and John helps him climb the bed. He shoves and pushes until he’s in the middle, snuggled between them, and plants big wet kisses on Sherlock’s face, then turns and does the same to John. “I miss you!”

The other three are peeking around the doorframe, and John wonders whose idea it was to send in the cute one first. He rolls his eyes and nearly upends his tea when Kaden wriggles to his feet and then leaps on them again. “Well? Come on, then,” he says to them, and they come scampering in. Lucy jumps up on the bed, and Andrew says, “Dad, Papa, I think maybe the food in the fridge might need to be thrown out, an experiment didn’t pan out the way I wanted it to,” and Monica says, “Gladstone made a mess but we cleaned it!” and Kaden shouts “Fooooood!” and John catches his husband’s eye through the chaos. Sherlock looks utterly exasperated, and fond, and satisfied, as if this moment is what has made the rest of it worthwhile.

John smiles.

Bloody kids.

9.

Sherlock's mobile rings, and it is the most loathsome sound in all the universe.

"Hi, Daddy!" Monica answers, bright and chirrupy, getting globs of peanut butter all over the hideously expensive phone. "Where are you we miss you are you on your way home soon?" Sherlock attempts to disentangle himself as she listens, nodding her head like he can see her. "You're already almost home? Really?"

Sherlock nearly breaks a kneecap stumbling into the sitting room.

"Papa is good, did you know he--"

Sherlock yanks the mobile away from his daughter and puts it to his ear. "Hello, John."

There's a pause, and then, " _Sherlock_."

"Where, exactly, are you?" Sherlock asks, trying not to sound as winded as he feels. There is a loud crack behind him; he turns and glares at Andrew, who holds his hands up in defense.

"Ashburton," John says, voice tinny as he goes through a tunnel.

Ashburton is far, far too close. "That's -- wonderful. Everyone will be thrilled."

"You sound thrilled," John says, a faux-complacency that bodes poorly for Sherlock.

"Of course I am, five days is far too long to leave your family, I don't care what the cause."

"It was really only three and you know it," John says; Sherlock can practically hear his eyes rolling.

"Papa!" Lucy yelps, and Sherlock turns around, blanches.

He shifts the phone, shooing the children out of the kitchen. "We'll see you when you get here then."

"You sure everything is alright?" John asks suspiciously.

Sherlock slaps the fire out with a dishrag. The lingering smell is incredibly unpleasant. "Don't be ridiculous." He makes an impatient gesture at Lucy, who quickly opens a window. "We'll see you in just a bit." He takes a risk and hangs up, turning to face the children. "Barring unforeseen traffic we have exactly thirty-five minutes before your father comes home and -- what's the phrase?"

"Flips a lid," Lucy supplies.

"Exactly. Split up and get all the major damage out of the way," he says, but before he can continue Kaden yells loudly down the hall, "Papa I watched Lola like you said but Lola escaped."

John didn't know who -- or what -- Lola was just yet. Should he find out in an inappropriate manner, neither Lola nor Sherlock would be long for this world.

Sherlock curses, closes his eyes.

When he opens them, all four children staring at him with wide eyes.

"Don't tell him I said that. And go!"

Everyone scatters.

10.

“I don’t feel so good,” Lucy says, arms crossed over her belly.

She says this during the usual morning hurricane that rips through 221 Baker Street, complete with screaming children (Monica, trying to find her homework), running washer and dryer (Andrew – who insisted on wearing his _other_ blue jeans today because they’re _lucky,_ Dad) and whining babies (Kaden, who refuses to eat his breakfast), so John doesn’t actually _listen_ to it, just pressing a hand to her forehead and declaring her feverless and ready for school. There are trainers to clean, homework to find, babies to nurture, and S _herlock_ , who comes out of the bedroom like a wounded bear in the middle of Morning Hurricane like he somehow expects _this_ morning to be different than any other one.

Kaden whines, first against John’s neck, and then into Sherlock’s shoulder, which frees John’s hands for shoes, homework, and Lucy, dragging her feet. Hats are located, mittens are put on, collars are adjusted, and then John herds them out the door with one last kiss to Sherlock’s frowning mouth, Kaden’s cheek.

The day goes downhill from there.

Needless to say, dinner that night is quiet. The only sound is chewing, and a siren down the street, and Gladstone’s nails on the floors as she goes from sleeping on the staircase to sleeping under one of the sitting room tables. Even the baby has calmed, though he still refuses to eat no matter what John does. The children all look about ten minutes from falling asleep, Sherlock’s eyes are heavy and low, and John wants to cry at the thought of having to clean all this up and get the dishwasher loaded.

It’s into this quiet, this comfortable silence, that John hears a muffled _pop_.

“What was that?” Andrew asks.

They remain quiet for a moment more, staring at one another, before Lucy whispers, “ _Oh my God, Papa._ ”

His daughter often times overreacts to the smallest things, but in this case John’s fine with the drama, endorses it in fact, and adds his own, “Sherlock!”, because their little son has just shat himself all over.

There’s poo coming up over the sides of the high chair, smeared up Kaden’s back, across the back of the seat and into his hair. It’s between his fingers, when he reaches out to see what it is, and down his legs, dripping onto the floor.

The girls scream, and Andrew yells, “Ew _, gross!”_ , and Sherlock stares at the lot of them like he can’t actually believe his life, struck motionless with the shock of this turn of events. Sherlock has gotten better about these sorts of things since the early days with Andrew, but this might be just more than he can bear.

And then, to compound events and make the situation about as bad as it can possibly be, Lucy vomits all down her front, setting off a domino effect from the furthest reaches of hell. Andrew, ever the sentimental stomach, throws up too, and Monica gags, hand clamped over her mouth. Chairs are upturned and two glasses topple, spilling milk out across the table and right into Sherlock’s lap.

There’s a rushing in John’s ears even as he picks the highchair up, baby and all, and hustles it across the hall into his and Sherlock’s loo. He sets the chair in the tub and Kaden blinks owlishly up at him, and there’s Lucy again with her head in the toilet, and Sherlock shouting, and Andrew looking for a place to vomit but somehow his brilliant son overestimates how much room there is in their small loo and ends up vomiting into Lucy’s hair. Kaden is whacking his hands on the highchair tray and sending droplets of diarrhea everywhere, and Monica is puking in the hallway, and Gladstone has come over to see what all the business is about and is now cheerfully eating the vomit on the floor under the kitchen table.

John is a fucking doctor _he will not be sick_ , but the same cannot be said of Sherlock, bless, and John gets the shower going and shoves all of his kids in, and they are screaming and Kaden chooses that moment to shat himself again just as John is lifting him out of the highchair. Diarrhea explodes out of his back end like buckshot, hitting with enough velocity against the back wall of the shower that it splatters right back onto all of them. The girls are sobbing and Andrew’s got the shocky look of someone who cannot comprehend what is happening, Kaden’s mess in a classic spray pattern over his shirt and face, and Sherlock makes a horrible “Hurrr,” noise behind him and Lucy wails, “Papa, gross!”, and John turns around to watch Sherlock make a mad dash back into the kitchen.

Kaden starts to scream and there’s explosion number three, and this time he hits John full stop, nearly blinding him when it gets into his left eye. The girls are hysterical because there’s diarrhea running down the length of the bathtub and somehow its clogged the drain, and they’re now all standing in a foot of shit, literally a foot of pure shit. Even Andrew has started to sob, though who could blame the poor lad, and just as John is thinking of handing Kaden off to one of the kids to go find out what the fuck has happened to his husband, Sherlock emerges from the kitchen, drenched in milk from the waist down, speckled with vomit, and looking wild around the eyes in a way John has never seen in all their years of marriage.

There they stand, at a crossroads. Sherlock, in the doorway, and John, holding an infant who has somehow covered the entire house, his siblings, and his parents in shit in less than thirty seconds.

He loses it, completely.

The kids stop crying, staring at him like he’s somehow lost his mind, and it’s just that much funnier. John laughs until he’s crying himself, streaks of tears running down his face, and the kids are yelling at him, Lucy shouting, “Oh my God, Daddy, this is not funny,” except it is, it’s the funniest thing John’s ever seen. Sherlock’s expression of shock turns into one of pure disgruntlement and John laughs even harder, so hard he has to sit on the edge of the tub so he won’t drop the baby.

Just when he thinks he’s got control of himself Kaden farts, loud and long against John’s leg, and it sets John off again, enough that the kids start giggling helplessly and Sherlock loses the stunned horror look he’s been sporting, rolling his eyes and coming into the bathroom. “I never thought you one for pedestrian humor, John,” and oh, Christ, he can’t breathe.

“There’s shit. In my eye,” he says, helplessly, and Sherlock starts to chuckle, and Lucy slips and almost falls, which sets everyone off, and that is the story of the time that Sherlock had to call in the Metro Home Repair Company to come replace all the toilets, paint all the walls, and regrout the bathtub and flooring at 221B Baker Street.


End file.
